BACKGROUND:A work-in-progress Dragonball Z game made in Sphere, based on the first major arc of the Z anime (Raditz to Frieza).

I started working on this project a few years ago as a standalone battle system in Sphere, back when I discovered this amazing software (I used to work with RM2k3 before). Then I tried to make it into a game with an actual plot, but it didn't really work out and eventually I just kinda left it. Recently found it when cleaning up my old computer, and with the DBZ love reignited by Dragonball Super, I decided to overhaul it into a DBZ battle system, and now hopefully into an actual game.

I decided to go with the beginning of DBZ up to Frieza, since there is no real action RPG game that covers it other than the original Legacy of Goku, which I personally didn't like too much, and also because it was probably my favorite part of the series growing up, and the part which introduced me into the Dragonball world.

STORY:5 Years after Goku has defeated his nemesis Piccolo at the World Martial Arts Tournament, it is a time of peace on planet earth. Goku is on his way to a reunion with his friends at Master Roshi's house, when a mysterious, powerful being from outer space lands on Earth and begins searching for a person he calls Kakarot.

Meanwhile, deep in outer space, an elite and ruthless fighter called Vegeta is on a mission to conquer a planet with his loyal companion, Nappa.

Follow the journey of Goku and Vegeta in the original Dragonball Z Series, throughout the Raditz saga and onto the end of the Frieza saga. You will experience all of their major events from the series, and a bunch of fun side-quests in-between.

The story takes place in several locations, but two of them are major: Planet Earth and Planet Namek. In both of those planets the game will feature an open-world map with several locations to visit.

PLAYABLE CHARACTERS:

You get to play as the two main protagonists of the Z series: Goku and Vegeta.

FEATURES:

A map based, active battle system, inspired by The Legacy of Goku Gameboy Advance games, and old school DBZ fighting games.

Various action-moves to make your playing experience more fun: jump, dash, teleport, sprint, etc.

A custom menu system with all the necessities.

A power progression system with stat points to increase your character's strength, stamina or speed by your choice, and skill points to improve your special abilities.

Z-Cards- sort of a secondary talent system for your character - aquire special cards, learn them, and improve specific skills and battle abilities.

All the basic functions of an RPG: a dialogue system, save system, questing system, items system and more!

Custom/Edited sprites by pixel artist George_LN, with high attention to details and smooth animations.

BATTLE SYSTEM:

Melee Attacks: Punches and kicks with combat bonus.

Defend by holding down a key to absorb a hard hit.

Special Attacks: DBZ's most iconic special skills, such as Goku's Kamehameha, Vegeta's Big Bang, and much more.

Skills: Get info on your current character's skills, upgrade them with your skill-points and setup hotkeys for them.

Z-Cards: Learn, remove, replace and find out about new unacquired Z-Cards.

Items: Beside using the items you acquire, you can choose to hold a specific item/item-stack, to then be able to use it from anywhere on the game's open map by pressing a hotkey.

Objectives: get info on your current missions and quests, their rewards and their story.

Settings: Several game options like music/se volume, health-bar displays and more.

Controls: Change the hotkeys for every action in the game. To be implemented: full controller support.

Z-CARDS:Special cards that you acquire throughout the game by questing and exploring. Z-Cards have specific ability changes that are meant to either make you more powerful, or just alter your gameplay a bit. They change all kind of battle mechanics, from adding features to your special skills to just spicing up your melee combat.

Z-Cards are characters specific and are also meant to create a different feel of gameplay between Goku and Vegeta. They each have a rank, going from rank 1 for the simplest/weakest cards to rank 7 for the most unique and powerful ones. The rank is indicated by a dragonball in the bottom corner of the card.

You acquire Z-Cards through questing and exploration. Most of the cards are hidden at start, but once you discover them through leveling and completing quests, you will get hints on how to get them. After you get cards, you can learn them from your Z-Cards menu.

Some cards will be exclusive with one another, meaning you cant have both active at a time, some will have a permanent effect, and some will only have a temporary effect with a cooldown / you will be able to acquire them again (undecided yet).

Here are some example of Z-Cards that are already in the game and working:

Latest Blog

This is a little post to share some changes that Saiyajin Legend is going through, mainly in it's battle system. I'll try to not ramble on too much, and use some screenshots. Screenshots are fun!

I recently posted a video on YouTube, showing off some battle system updates. In the video, you can see a power management system that utilizes a kind of combo points system for skill usage. In the screenshot above, you can see the little combo bar with full 5 combo points (the max was supposed to be raised a little as you progress), and the regular Ki bar used as a power bar.

The intention was to have some simple abilities (like Ki Blast) be free for use, and some cost combo-points (like Kamehameha. You would build up combo points with the simple abilities and melee combat, and spend them on your finishing moves.

The power bar would function as a damage multiplier, and would decrease a little bit every time you use a skill. You can charge it back up whenever you want, and some abilities will grant you the ability to break it's limit, and effectively power up to above maximum and have a higher damage multiplier.

While a pretty cool concept, we decided that it's not really the direction for a DBZ game, and then after some brainstorming we came up with some changes:

- Combo points are gone. I will keep the system for a different, more classic-RPG themed game.

- Ki bar is back to it's original form. Even before the latest changes which made it refill by melee combat and the charge ability. It is now quickly refilling over time, like it was in the earlier versions of the battle system.

- New bar: Power Bar - It was one of the good things out of the scrapped design so we kept it. It acts as a damage multiplier, consumed slowly by special skills, is rechargeable, and can be overcharged with special skills (Kaioken).

- Kick and Punch separated. This is still under some testing and might change soon, but we are trying this out. We separated kick and punch into 2 different buttons, to allow for more creative combo moves. We just need to create some creative combo moves now.

- New controls. This is only possible because I finally made a controls menu, so you can fully customize your controls in the game.
What we try to do now is reduce the overall number of buttons in the game, and have more things use button combinations. For example, Kaioken is now activated by pressing your Teleport button and your Ki Blast button at the same time. Power-up is done by pressing Guard + Punch. Much more of those to come.
This also allows for much better joystick/controller support.

That's it. Pretty simple and clean. You got your Ki, you got your power, you can play with both of those as you please and the gameplay is relatively free, fast paced and fun. If you read up to here, you are a champ, and thanks!

I see you added a new control system, mapping controls is nice but I feel most people end up using pads for these types of games so maybe pick a controller layout and go with it? Xbox or PS4 are the most common layouts on PC today, I took another route and chose the Sega Saturn Controller, Z and C buttons would just be LT and RT on a xbox or ps4 pad.

author=RukiriI see you added a new control system, mapping controls is nice but I feel most people end up using pads for these types of games so maybe pick a controller layout and go with it? Xbox or PS4 are the most common layouts on PC today, I took another route and chose the Sega Saturn Controller, Z and C buttons would just be LT and RT on a xbox or ps4 pad.

Heh, trust me, East is getting a lot of pressure from me to design the game with a controller in mind. That's what lead to at least having mappable controls. We're trying to sort out what buttons we even want, but also trying to make it accessible to everyone. Keyboard and Joystick. But I'm an advocate for putting the Joystick first.